Housing impact
According to the 2014 strategic housing market assessment, just under 11 per cent of Rochdale borough residents were dissatisfied with the state of their homes.
Why is housing important to health?
The right home environment is crucial to health and wellbeing so housing is considered to be one of the wider determinants of health. Unhealthy, unsuitable or unstable housing presents a risk to a person's physical and mental health.
Conversely, the right home environment protects and improves health and wellbeing and prevents physical and mental ill health (Public Health England, 2017).
Groups at risk of poor health due to their home environment
While some people take having the right home environment for granted, it's actually a complex process involving people, communities and organisations working together to produce the ideal environment for promoting good health and wellbeing through the home.
Those at particular risk include:
- Children and their families
- People with long-term conditions
- People with mental health issues
- People with learning disabilities
- People recovering from ill health
- Older people
- People who spend a lot of time at home such as carers
- Low income households
- People who experience a number of inequalities, also called inclusion health groups
Information we have to consider includes the tenure of the home, the quality and standard of the home, the suitability of the home, the stability of the home and the main health risks and wider impacts.
Statistics on housing
- Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities - Deprivation, housing and homelessness statistical collection - this statistical collection includes data on affordable housing supply, dwelling stock, housing surveys, homelessness, household projections and social housing.
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) - Wider determinants of health profile - the wider determinants of health profile includes a section on the natural and built environment and contains data on overcrowded households, affordability of home ownership, fuel poverty and adults in contact with services living in appropriate accommodation.
Guidance on housing
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) - Wider determinants of health profile: Built and natural environment - this section of the profile includes resources, ideas for interventions and case studies on housing.
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) - Improving health through the home guidance - resources to inform local action to ensure that everyone has a home in which to start, live, work, and age well. This guide describes why investing in improving the home or housing circumstances may be an effective means to improve health and wellbeing, reduce health inequalities and prevent, delay and reduce demand for health and social care services.
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance - Home - NICE has produced a number of documents on housing and the home including guidance on home care for older people, unintentional injuries in the home and preventing excess winter deaths.